XI. THE LAND UNABLE TO BEAR THE WORDS OF AMOS

The following is an example of a case where the hints which transpire in the prophet agree very well with particulars recorded in the history; but perhaps that is all that can be said of it with safety: the language of the prophet not being sufficiently specific to fix the coincidence to a certainty. The reader must judge for himself of the value of the argument in this particular instance.

We read in Amos (7:10, 11) as follows: “Then Amaziah the priest of Beth-el sent to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying, Amos hath conspired against thee in the midst of the house of Israel: the land is not able to bear all his words. For thus Amos saith, Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel shall surely be led away captive out of their own land.”

We have here a priest of Beth-el, i.e., of the calves, denouncing to the King of Israel the prophet Amos, as one who was unsettling the minds of the people by his prophecies—prophecies which “the land was not able to bear.” It would seem then, from this phrase, that the state was in a critical condition; such a condition as gave double force to a prediction which went to deprive it of its king, and to consign its children to bondage. It was ill able to spare Jeroboam, or bear up against evil forebodings. This we gather from the passage of Amos.

Let us now turn to the fourteenth chapter of the second Book of Kings. There we read, first of all, of Jeroboam, that “he departed not from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin” (v. 23)—i.e., that he strenuously supported the worship of the calves. This fact, then, makes it highly probable that Amaziah, a priest of Beth-el, would find in Jeroboam a ready listener to any sinister construction he might put upon the words of a prophet of the Lord, like Amos.

We further learn, that this same Jeroboam was one of the most successful princes that had sat upon the throne of Israel; restoring her coasts, and recovering her possessions by force of arms (v. 25, 28): a sovereign, therefore, to be missed by the nation he ruled, whenever he should be removed; and especially if there was nobody forthcoming calculated to replace him. Let us see how this was. Jeroboam reigned forty-one years (2 Kings 14:23), but in the twenty-seventh of Jeroboam, Azariah (or Uzziah as he is called in the Chronicles, 2 Chron. 26:1), began to reign in Judah (2 Kings 15:1); i.e., Jeroboam’s reign expired in the fifteenth of Azariah. But his son and successor Zachariah, for some reason or other, and owing to some impediment, which does not transpire, did not begin his reign over Samaria till the thirty-eighth of Azariah (ib. 8). Therefore the throne of Samaria must have been in some sort vacant twenty-three years: nor did the anarchy cease even then, for Zachariah having at length ascended the throne, after a reign of six months was murdered publicly “before the people;” and Shallum, the usurper who succeeded him, shared the same fate, after a reign of a single month (ib. 13); and Menahem, the successor of Shallum, was reduced to the necessity of buying off an invasion of the Assyrians (the first incursion of that people) under Pul (ib. 19); Assyria having in the meanwhile grown great, and now taking advantage of the ruinous condition of Israel, consequent on the death of Jeroboam, to come against him [This is the first mention of the kingdom of Assyria since the days of Nimrod (Gen. 10:11). It seems to have been inconsiderable when the eighty-third Psalm was penned, in which Assur is represented as helping the children of Lot (v. 8).] .

Amaziah, therefore, might well declare that the land was not able to bear the words of Amos, for in all probability he could foresee, from the actual circumstances of the country, the troubles that were likely to ensue whenever Jerobam’s reign should be brought to an end.

Here, then, I say, the language of the prophet is at least very consistent with the crisis of which he speaks, as represented in the Book of Kings.

I could add several other examples of this class, i.e., where allusions in the prophets are very sufficiently responded to by events recorded in the historical Books of Scripture, but still the want of precision in the terms makes it difficult to affirm the coincidence between the two documents with confidence: and therefore I have thought it better to suppress such instances, as not possessing that force of evidence which entitles them to a place in these pages; as for the same reason I drew no contingent to my argument from a comparison between the Psalms and the Books of Samuel; for though many of the Psalms concur very well with the circumstances in which David is represented to have been actually placed from time to time, in the Books of Samuel; and though the Psalms are often headed with a notice that this was written when he was flying before Saul, and that when he was reproached by Nathan; yet the internal testimony is not so strong as to carry conviction along with it, of such being really the case; and this failing, it is folly to weaken a sound argument by a fanciful extension of it.